Sword Art Online:: Another Sword
by Swifttalon-audi
Summary: During the two years of Sword Art Online, there was the (in)famous Beater Kirito, who fought as a solo player on the front lines. But, what about the other ones? The ones that survived, and the ones that fell. Original Character based, cameos from canonical characters.


So, there are ten thousand of us, stuck in a damn video game that we can't log out off. And, not to mention, if our health goes down to zero, we die, in game and in reality. I know there was a reason that I didn't trust these freaking NerveGear when I bought the hardware. But of course, I shrugged the feeling off. I looked around the plaza of the Town of Beginnings at the other players, who had also just witnessed all of the news that had been broken to us. Most of them were still staring up at where the creator of the game, Kayaba Akihiko. I began to back up, out of the crowd, not wanting to get caught up in the mad rush getting out of the plaza. I broke through the last outer circle of players, turned around, and started sprinting down the alley.

My name is Miyazaki Yuki, and I'm a player of Sword Art Online. And I should probably start from the beginning.

I slipped my helmet over my longish, black hair with a headband on, to keep my bangs out of my eyes. The translucent blue visor began to hum to life, starting to show a heads-up-display. I looked over the icons as they began to appear; Main Menu, Inventory, Skills, and Communication. I had already and gone to set up my avatar, as well as configure the avatar to my actual body size. When I did this, I realized how freaking tiny I am, especially compared to the other guys in my class, a first year in high school. As the Gear continued to activate, I laid down on my bed, looking out over the sprawling city, considering my apartment was on one of the highest floors of the building, I could see almost the entire city.

Finally the Gear finished loading, and the Sword Art Online logo appeared. I was about to begin one of the best MMO's of all time, with a total of ten thousand players on at the same time and the same place. This was truly going to be an epic. I went unconscious as the visor went white. Multi-colored bars of light sped around me, just for show, I think. I mean, what else would they be for? As the light faded, I started to look around at the world around me.

First off, I looked up at the huge spire looming over the city, the black steel shining in the sunlight beaming down from the clear blue skies. That must be the Black Iron Castle. I had seen screenshots of it from the beta testers on the official site. Once I got my eyes off of the castle, I actually looked around as the other thousands of players began their first log in to Sword Art Online. Flashes of light blue light appeared as each player logged in and connected, all of them looking around in awe of the virtual world. Argus has really outshone the rest of the gaming world with all of this. Everything felt so real; the light wind slightly blowing against all of us, the chatter of players either gawking at the scenery or greeting friends and strangers alike, already sending friend requests and forming parties. There were all kinds of avatars, some tall, strongly built like the heroes of movies and shonen manga, and others that were like me, smaller in stature, but still with the same skills and abilities.

"Oh!" I had just remembered something. I couldn't go and run off with some random party; I wasn't the only in my group of friends to get the game, and we had decided to meet up as soon as we got in. Now, the manual said that I just had to swipe my left hand to pull up the menu, so I did, and the five circles that made up the HUD appeared. I scrolled down to communicate, and pressed 'Locate'. "Um, how did this thing work again?" I muttered to myself. "Locate: Takahashi Ayumu," I ordered aloud, watching the semi-transparent screen begin to scan the area. The two of us had exchanged usernames while we were waiting in line to get the game, along with another one of us, Saito Hitomi. We had all just decided to use our names to our characters, considering they aren't just characters anymore, they were us. I looked back down at the menu, seeing that it had found Ayumu.

The locater marked his position with a blue dot, as compared to all of the other green ones. I looked at the legend. Green meant that they were ordinary players, like the most of us. Blue, however, meant that they were either being tracked or in our party. Under that, there were three more colors; orange, which meant that they had committed a crime, like attacking another player; white, which were NPCs; and finally red, PKs and enemies. I looked at the blue dot, which hadn't moved. 'He's probably still staring at everything in this city,' I thought, exiting out of the map and loading up the locater again. "Locate: Saito Hitomi," I ordered. The map reappeared, still showing Ayumu as a blue dot, as well as another one, Hitomi. She was relatively close to Ayumu, and was moving toward him. She had probably done the same thing as I did, searching for the two of us. I started to wade through the sea of people when I message appeared in front of me.

I pressed the button, and the text appeared on another screen in front of me, reading, "Hey, it's Hitomi. I'm grabbing Ayumu and heading to the weapons shops, before everyone else does. I know they will, considering that's what I did the first time, as a beta tester. If we go ahead now, we can get the first pickings of the shops. I already know what I'm getting, so try to decide as we get there. I've attached the location of the NPC smith's shop to your HUD. I'll see you there, Yuki!"

I closed the message and looked back on the map. The two blue dots had conjoined and started to head toward a set of blue rectangles. Considering that blue meant tracking, those must be the shops. I started to push through the crowd of people again, busting out through the outer row of people. I noticed other people doing the same, beta testers, and probably their friends. No doubt they were all heading for the same thing. I was among the first out, I checked out the map. I'd have to clear a few alleys to get to the shops. Easy enough. I started out at a dead run down the alleys, though I was tired by the fourth one. I was closer, and it appeared that the sea of green dots was still pulsing at the plaza, but more and more were starting to disperse. I came to a skidding halt as I reached the side of a building, one that was marked blue on my map. I walked around to the front to find Ayumu and Hitomi.

"'Bout took you long enough to get here, man! We were about to go in and get stuff without you," Ayumu teased, a grin spreading across his face, red hair falling in front of his eyes. He was the attempted comic of the trio of us, whereas I was the more witty, and Hitomi the serious one out of us. "Yuki. That really did take forever. What took you?" she asked, staring at me and brushing a strand of brown hair out of her eye.

"No, how'd you two get here so freaking fast?" I got out a few seconds after you did, and took the fastest route for me. Were you that close?" I answered, returning the look. Honestly, if you looked at the two of us, you'd think we were worst enemies most of the time, but we really do have a lot of fun together, even if you can't tell.

"Well let's get going, then. We can't spend all day here, the other beta testers are going to get here soon. We had better hurry before they wipe the place clean. You two start in the blade shop. I'm going to go get my polearm from the merchant over there, where I found it last time. Then we can meet at the armor shop. Deal?"

"Sounds good to me."

"Same here."

I followed Ayumu through the wooden door leading to the inside of the weapons shop. Inside, weapons of several different types hung on the walls, swords of every kind, and several bladed weapons. Ayumu eyed a set of different sized daggers, dark toned steel faded out to silver on the blade, and the hilt and handguard were silver with some kind of black crystal insets. There were some throwing knives, and a couple of full size knives in the set. Leaving him be, I started to check out some of the other weapons. There were several one-handed swords hung up, but none of them struck an interest. Same with the two-handed ones, too. I began to look at the other types of weapons, and one thing in particular caught my attention; a pair of wooden hilted Kama. I walked over to the small scythes and their stats appeared on my HUD.

"Short range, Piercing and Slashing damage… Pretty high attack, considering they're weak enough to be considered one weapon. About the same damage as a few of the two-handed swords, and the speed of the one handers. There's not even a duel wielding ability, but these are still here," I whispered under my breath. I picked up the pair of weapons and walked over to the counter, where Ayumu was leaning, waiting for me to finish. I could see the smaller blades strapped on his waist, and the two larger knives in sheathes on his chest.

"Does it take you forever to do everything? I swear, I've been waiting on this counter forever, waiting, waiting, and more waiting," he said, moving out of the way. The NPC shopkeeper stood behind the counter, giving a warm smile, and asking if I had found everything okay. If I hadn't known he was an NPC, I'd have sworn that he was another player. The game was just so real.

"Oh, um, yeah! I found what I was looking for. Thanks for asking," I replied watching my money go down. The Kama automatically equipped themselves, hanging in sheaths from my waist.

"Thanks for your business! I'd say that you should come back, but you'll need to level up and go to better shops, so I guess this is goodbye," said the shopkeeper. 'Well, now I'm sad,' I thought, 'I never would've thought that the AI is this... real.' I opened the door to the outside, the crowd finally beginning to enter the market. They must've got stuck in the alleyways. I looked at Ayumu, who just nodded back, and we took off in the direction of the armor shop. Standing in front of the place was Hitomi, clothed in new, light brown shirt and skirt, with iron body armor, arm guards, and a bladed polearm slung across her back. She was holding a couple of crystals in her hand.

"I saw the crowd coming in on my map, so I went ahead and got the armors that I thought you would like the most. Ayumu, catch," she said as she tossed the crystal to him. As he caught it, the device unfolded, and the armor automatically equipped itself to him. Instead of his original, starter armor, Ayumu was now covered in maroon leather, with a light steel chestplate, arm guards, and shin guards. "Uh. Thanks, I guess."

"I figured you wanted a light and fast fighting style, so I got you this. I knew I wasn't mistaken when you showed up with at least seven knives on you. And I want cash back for that. Yuki, here's your set," giving me the other crystal. "Thanks," I said, taking the gift box out of her hand. I pressed the holographic button hovering over the object, which changed to read 'Open?'. I pressed the button again and the diamond opened one of it's sides, which showed a gray and silver set of lighter armor, with the query 'Equip or add to inventory?'. I pressed the equip button and a flash of light blinded me. I looked down after it faded and saw that I was now covered in a gray shirt, with a silver iron chestplate on under a jacket the same shade of gray as my shirt, but with metallic silver lining. It had silver arm braces that went with the chest plate, along with the slate colored pants and metal armored boots. The two Kama that I had bought hung from the shop hung in black leather sheaths.  
"Freaking awesome," I muttered under my breath, "Thanks Hitomi." Ayumu whistled. "That's nice, man."  
"I expect money from you too. No exceptions. In fact, don't you still owe me cash for lunch a few days ago?"  
Shit. I had hoped she forgot about that. "Yeah. I was gonna pay you tomorrow."  
"Yeah, right."  
I sighed. But I'm dead broke. Time to change the subject. "But anyway, the market's starting to fill up, so we'd better go ahead and head out to the fields to get some XP before they get picked clean, right?"  
Ayumu nodded, "Right. I want to test out these knives. Bet they're better than everybody else's."  
"Considering that we're still in the Town of Beginnings, that's not saying much, Ayumu," Hitomi stated, "But you're right. We should go ahead and go out to the fields and start taking out some Boars and Kobolds. If we can get a head start, the other players trying to beat the game will be behind us, which is where I want them. I can't be stuck in second place the entire time like I was in the Beta."

So with that, we began the journey out of the town with the only female in our group leading us, leaving nearly all of the other players behind, with a couple of exceptions, the ones that were ahead of the main pack. The cobblestone trail led across the fields, and a wooden sign stood at one of the fields, reading 'Boar Fields.'

Hitomi turned around and looked back at the two of us. "This looks like a good place to teach you two how to play this. There's only one other guy here, and we passed two more on the way, so we should have pretty good pickings for XP. We should go ahead and party up, so we can keep track of one another's status. I'll send you requests."

She opened up the holographic menu and sent us the invites. Our own menus appeared shortly, with the Deny and Accept query. Pressing yes, the status bar in the top left part of my vision was joined by Hitomi's, then by Ayumu's.

"Okay, so first off, both of you go find a boar and take your best swing at it. Just to gauge how good you are." That seemed simple enough. I watched as Ayumu took one of the knives out of its sheath and stalked up a grassy hill, one with a large brown boar on top, tusks giving off a glare.

Ayumu positioned himself so that he was facing the boar from the side, changed his foothold, and pushed off, charging at the beast, who whipped around, leering down at the player. Ayumu yelled as he lunged at the boar, which reared up, its sharp tusks tearing into Ayumu as the boar flipped him over its shoulder. I glanced at his health bar on my HUD, as it started to slide down to 234 from all of our original 250. I took out my pair of Kama and started to make a zig zag pattern up the grassy hill, going to aim a vertical cut at the monster's back. That didn't work. As I jumped into the air, the boar moved out from under me, bucking up and hitting me in the back. I went sprawling through the air, landing in a patch of grass and rolling down the hill.

Hitomi held her hand over her mouth, trying to hold back laughter, letting some slip out. I watched my health go down a few points, to 237. I looked back, and saw Ayumu standing back up.

"Oww…" he groaned, "Why the hell didn't that work? I had the complete advantage!"

"You didn't use a Sword Skill," explained Hitomi, recovering from her laugher. "You're supposed to use a Sword Skill when you're in battle, like you'd use a non-combat one when you do that certain task, like fishing. Here, I'll show you."

Hitomi began to walk forward up the hill, straight at the boar, taking the polearm from behind her back. She planted her feet in the ground, and prepared to strike. She stopped for a fraction of a second, as if to focus, when the blade of the weapon began to glow green. She pushed off of the ground and dashed at the navy-colored beast, and slashed out at it, creating a long, red virtual cut across its side. I watched as the boar's health bar travelled from green, at full health, down to nothing, then it burst into blue fragments, giving experience points to the entire party.

"See? That's how you use Skills. You have to focus your energy on the attack you're trying to do, and the game system will guide you through the attack. Find another boar and try it."


End file.
